[This is the web site of the reconstituted Socialist Party of Great Britain who were expelled from the Clapham-based Socialist Party in May 1991 for using the name âThe Socialist Party of Great Britainâ in our propaganda as required by Clause 6 of The Object and Declaration of Principles formulated in 1904 to which we agree. We reconstituted ourselves as The Socialist Party of Great Britain in June 1991. Any money given to us for literature or support is in recognition that we are not the Clapham based Socialist Party at 52 Clapham High Street and any mistakes will be rectified.]

Socialist Studies No.53, Autumn 2004

Is
Oil A Problem?

Capitalism,
not Oil, is the Problem

For
most of the 20th century, oil was intimately related to plunder, pollution
and war. As a commodity oil has always presented the capitalist class
and its political agents with a problem. Oil has become a problem
product, a problem of location, a problem of access and a problem
of securing its trade routes. The recent terrorist problem in Saudi
Arabia only served to highlight the unpredictability of the oil market
and how precarious oil's security, production and transport are throughout
the world.

Can
capitalism sustain its voracious use of energy? If the US is the mirror
image that the rest of the capitalist world aspires to, then environmentalists
claim that it is this capitalist utopia which is equivalent to the
energy consumption of seven planet Earths. Overall the US is way out
in front, with 2.3bn metric tonnes of oil (or equivalent) consumed
for commercial purposes in 2001.

The EU 15 and China are on similar
terms, both consuming about half of the US amount, whereas India consumes
about a quarter of America's amount. The rapid growth of developing
capitalist countries like China and India is putting a tremendous
strain on energy supply (WORLD BANK, June 2004). Higher energy prices,
national rivalry, blocs pumping oil to favoured countries at the expense
of others, the political instability of existing resources: all point
to a coming century of war and civil unrest in which the working class
will be the losers.

Pollution
caused by oil has also been a problem for the capitalist class, particularly
when one capitalist state pollutes another. The International Maritime
Organisation has highlighted the numerous international treaties since
the 1950's enacted to try to prevent oil spillage and environmental
problems. The pollution persists in spite of design methods and technology
which could be used to prevent oil spillage and dumping at sea. An
academic, Sue Haile of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, noted
that:

Over
2.5 billion tonnes of oil is used around the world every year, and 3
million tonnes is discharged to the ocean as a result of accidents.
30% of the world input of petrochemical hydrocarbons enters the sea
from rivers and 45% from vessel operations and accidents In 1983
oil was the cause of 40% of the serious freshwater pollution incidents
which were so bad that water treatment works had to shut down.
NOTES ON OIL POLLUTION, November 2000

While
accidents, like oil spillage, might occur in Socialism, they will
not be a result of commercial interests and the pursuit of profit.
Nor will they be as a result of the anarchic unplanned commodity production
which blights the world. Nor will Socialism be burdened with international
rivalries which force oil to be taken by sea when safer and more environmentally
beneficial routes would be available. The illegal flushing out of
tanks in the ocean, the Torrey Canyon running aground in 1967, the
1989 Exxon Valdez incident, and the 1993 Braer oil spillage: these
and other incidents all resulted from the commercial imperatives placed
upon shipping. Current energy use is set within a context of competition,
markets and profit-making - anti-social practices which Socialism
will not be burdened with.

Capitalism
Causes Pollution

In
Nigeria, production of oil, discovered in the Niger some 40 years
ago, is having a devastating affect on that country's largest wetland
region. Families living among the oil fields are breathing in methane
gas and having to cope with frequent oil leaks. Last year about 10,000
barrels of oil were spilt in the nine states that make up the Niger
Delta (BBC NEWS, 23 June 2004). For Shell and the Nigerian Government,
profit is the driving force not human considerations. Strikes, government
repression, bribery and corruption, violence, police brutality and
pollution characterise oil production for profit in Nigeria.

And
what are the results of new pipelines when the over-riding factor
is profit and the pursuit of the interests of the capitalist class
in protecting trade routes, strategic areas of importance and the
supply of raw resources? In an article "Hidden costs of pipeline
meant to safeguard West's oil supply" (INDEPENDENT, 26 June
2004), we are told that the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, cutting
through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan from the Caspian Sea to Turkey's
Mediterranean coast, has meant:
· On the final section of the pipe to Ceyhan, cancer risks
to the workers who applied coatings that contained highly carcinogenic
compounds without air-filter masks, although there was a warning about
the product;
· To save time and money the storage tankers at the Ceyhan
terminal were designed without proper drainage, meaning that toxins
flow into the ground;
· Builders cut through local water supplies and flooded farmland
with sediment;
· Natural wildlife and important natural landscapes have been
and are being destroyed.

Why the pollution, the destruction of the environment and the risk
to workers? THE INDEPENDENT report tells us that the reasons are profit,
trade routes and strategic considerations:

By
2010 the Caspian region could produce 3.7 million barrels per day.
This could fill a large hole in world supplies as world oil demand
is expected to grow from 76 million a day in 2000 to 118.9 billion
by 2020 When it is complete next year, the pipeline will pump
4.2 million barrels a year, easing the US's reliance on the unstable
Gulf States for oil.

Western
capitalism wants to be less dependent on the Middle East. The oil
is important for commodity production and exchange for profit.These
are the important considerations under capitalism, not human need.
And all the environmentalist groups were powerless to stop this pollution,
environmental damage and serious injury to workers occurring. The
failure of the environmentalist lobby demonstrated that reforms are
not the answer. Nor is pleading to capitalist states, the World Bank,
the IMF and the United Nations. All that wasted effort should have
been spent abolishing capitalism, not vainly trying to make it something
it can never become. When future wars and conflicts hit this area,
the cause will be oil and capitalism's demand for oil.

Reforms
Are Not The Answer

Capitalism
is a polluting social system, and generates unimaginable waste in
the way it produces and exchanges commodities for a profit. The oil
consumed by weapons manufacturing, war production, armed conflict,
government bureaucracy, commerce, banking, advertising, accountancy,
what passes for the 'leisure' industry, the irrational patterns of
employment imposed on the working class forcing workers to sit repetitively
in traffic jams going to and from their place of exploitation, is
all a sheer waste of energy.

Capitalism
needs this waste for the production and circulation of commodities
and money transactions. A Socialist society doesn't. What socialist
production will be used for will only be to meet social needs, which
can be done rationally and efficiently without markets and financial
institutions. The environmental lobby passes over in silence the fact
that waste and pollution are caused by capitalism, private property
ownership, the market, and the buying and selling of commodities.
They cannot think beyond capitalism.

Increasingly,
there have been anxious commentaries on the depletion of oil. In a
book, THE PARTY'S OVER: OIL, WAR AND THE FATE OF INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
(2003), Richard Heinberg warns that capitalism is about to change
dramatically and permanently as a result of oil depletion. Within
the next few years, he writes, the fall in the global production of
oil will mean advanced and developing capitalist countries will have
less energy available for the pursuit of profit.

Richard
Heinberg shows how oil and war have been closely related throughout
the 20th century and will continue to be in the 21st century, so long
as the working class allow capitalism to remain in existence. He shows
how competition to control oil supplies is likely to lead to new resource
wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and South America. It is interesting
to note that the book was written before the recent oil war in Iraq,
and while the CIA were busy destabilising the elected President in
Venezuela to protect US oil interests. Venezuela's oil amounts to
about 90 per cent of its exports, and 60 per cent of this exported
oil is supplied to the US (THE ECONOMIST POCKET WORLD IN FIGURES,
2003).

The
problem for capitalist nations has been one of supply. Although there
are other forms of energy sources, oil still drives capitalist production.
And there is the apparent problem of oil depletion. We are told by
environmentalists that there is a looming energy crisis which faces
us all.

However,
the question of fossil fuels, where to find them and what to do about
them, is not the urgent problem it is claimed to be. The problem is
not that the oil is running out but that capitalism systematically
wastes so much oil and other resources for the pursuit of profit and
capital accumulation. BP's annual STATISTICAL REVIEW OF WORLD ENERGY
stated that oil reserves worldwide were little changed in 2003, being
helped by new deposits in Russia and the viability of extracting from
Canada's tar sands. BP believes oil reserves will last 41 years. Proven
global reserves were 1.147 million barrels (INDEPENDENT, 19 June 2004).

BP's
oil supply figures indicate that the problem of depletion is a real
one, although companies like BP are part of the problem not the solution.
Here is some of BP's contribution to the environment. In February
1991, a 300,000-gallon spill from a BP-chartered oil tanker spread
for 20 square miles and severely disrupted the environment of nearby
Huntington beach in California, home of free market economics. In
July 1988 the Piper Alpha disaster led to strikes on North Sea oil
rigs. Workers wanted union recognition and improved safety. BP did
not agree and started to recruit non-union labour. In the 1990's,
two explosions in BP's Grangemouth refinery cost the lives of three
workers. Between 1985-9, BP received contracts from the Ministry of
Defence for more than £100 million. So too did its other competitors
on the world oil market.

The
optimism by BP, one of capitalism's leading oil companies (record
profits in 2003 of £9.75 bn, and dubious environmental and social
practices throughout the world), sits awkwardly with the Cassandras
in the environmental lobby whose predictions about oil depletion are
wholly pessimistic. We are told by ecologists that oil production
will peak any time between now and 2015 (Paul Roberts, THE END OF
OIL, 2004) and that consumption of fossil fuels is beginning to change
the world's climate.

Production
for Use and not Profit

Environmentalists
like Paul Roberts tend to miss the real economic cause of this change.
The despoliation of the world's environment is a by-product of decades
of commodity production and exchange for profit about which the environmental
lobby remains mute. Like all reformers Roberts believes that you can
have capitalism without the effects of capitalism - a green and environmentally
friendly capitalism. You can't.

THE
END OF OIL offers no solutions to energy depletion because the author
cannot think beyond the market. There is an answer to the environmental
problems we face but not one offered by Paul Roberts. He does not
tackle the basic question of ownership and control. The private property
ownership of oil, either by private companies or the State, goes unquestioned.
A
start would be for the working class to stop looking to politicians
to resolve problems of energy depletion and pollution. Politicians
are mentally imprisoned by a world of markets, buying and selling,
and profit-making. They cannot challenge the existence of nation states
and the property interests found within those countries. International
agreements which try to limit the damage capitalism is doing to the
planet take the profit system as an unquestioned given. And in protecting
oil interests the State will attack the working class.

Environmentalists
bewail the fact that legislation is passed but the pollution continues
or they come up against well-financed interest groups with sophisticated
PR advisors and bought scientists claiming that environmental damage
is not really taking place. Treaties have to negotiate the realities
of real politik and conflicting national interests. They end
up as a fudge and, when leading capitalist countries like the US do
not sign up to a treaty, nothing can be done.

To
protect and further the interest of the capitalist class is what governments
are about. They are the "executive of the bourgeoisie".
They do not serve the interests of the working class. That governments
serve the interests of capital was noted by Paul Roberts. The Labour
Government, for example, pressurised the Office of National Statistics
to omit, from its report on the environment, figures which showed
sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions from air and freight transport,
to support the commercial interests of these sectors of the economy.
So much for the Labour Party's "green credentials"
and its leading environmentalist "champion", Jonathan
Porritt. The Labour Government preaches to the working class the virtue
of spending Sunday mornings at a local recycling depot putting glass
in bottle banks but slavishly supports the interests of polluting
industries because of the pressures of world competition and profitability.

The
answer to environmental problems is to look with a sober disposition
at the cause of resource depletion, waste and pollution. That requires
a questioning and rejection of markets, buying and selling, price
mechanisms, the profit motive, private property ownership, and nation
states. In short, it means simultaneously to question politically,
and to reject, capitalism. The answer to environmental problems is
consciously and politically to establish a social system in which
production will take place just to meet human needs, and where production
will be rationally planned to ensure that the environmental impact
of producing goods and services is kept to a minimum.

The
framework for an environmentally responsive form of production has
to be Socialism. Only the framework of common ownership and democratic
control of the means of production and distribution can allow the
pressing social problems caused by capitalism to be tackled and resolved.
What prevents the problem of resource depletion and pollution from
being addressed is private property ownership and the profit motive.
The revolutionary agents necessary to solve the problems caused by
capitalism are not the reformers but the working class.

Hard
Choices?

Capitalists
who 'down-size', 'restructure' and 'de-layer'
and politicians who remove services and make cuts in budgets say that
they have to make "hard choices". They say there
is no alternative. Pain today, pleasure tomorrow. Yet tomorrow never
comes. Under capitalism the working class are in constant pain: the
pain of exploitation, the pain of having to struggle to make ends
meet, and the pain of being at the receiving end of problems caused
by capitalism - problems like insecurity, unemployment, war, poverty
and social alienation.

The
Labour Government of 1997 said they had "hard choices"
to make. This meant further attacks on the unemployed and those on
benefits. And it meant further attacks on the trade unions and the
working class.

The
working class in Germany have also been told that they face hard choices.
The depression there has lasted for over a decade with millions unemployed.
Governments have not been able to turn the economy around. Now workers
have been told that German capitalism can only compete against other
countries if there is a 'flexible labour market'. The Labour
market is to be 'liberalised'. But not 'liberalised'
in the interests of the working class. When markets are 'liberalised'
it is in the interests of those consuming labour power, not of those
selling it. Workers are going to lose their "generous benefits"
- as if capitalism is ever generous to the working class. Unemployment
benefits are to be cut and there will be charges for doctors' visits,
but tax cuts for the rich (INDEPENDENT, 28 Feb.04). The labour market
is in fact a prison. A place of coercion.

For
politicians, capitalists come first in the queue. This was seen recently
in Blair's dash to Libya in pursuit of lucrative contracts for British
capitalism. His handshakes were with wealthy commercial contractors,
not the poor and politically brutalised majority who live in Libya.
No Maoists went to China with Blair, only hard-nosed businessmen.
They saw the Chinese working class as a source of cheap labour, of
exploitation and of profit.

Politicians
believe that capitalism only works well if and when it suits capitalists
to invest, in other words, if conditions promise good profits for
them. Only then, they say, will factories be built, workers employed
and production take place. Therefore, in making choices, governments
can only attack the working class. And when they make "hard
choices" governments only attack the working class harder.
When capitalists introduce labour-saving machinery, it is not for
the benefit of workers but to get rid of them.

So,
the expression "hard choices" is utterly bogus. The
assumption is that decisions are made from the nuances of balancing
the needs of competing priorities for finite monetary resources. Public
choice theory, blown into Britain from the US, imposes on governments
the discipline of a 'benign
market framework'
working for the public good - which, when translated into plain English,
means the good of the capitalist class. 'Market populism' it
is called, or 'rational choice theory' as it is referred to
by the market fundamentalists who advocate this particular ruling
class doctrine.

Public
choice theory is all the rage in Whitehall. This is because politicians
and their economic advisors take it as axiomatic that economics is
all about "the allocation of scarce resources among infinite
competing wants" (any economics text book). This denies from
the very start that it would ever be conceivably possible to have
social arrangements where there is no scarcity and where enough is
produced to meet all human needs. How convenient.

Yet
the market is not benign. It is destructive. "Creative destruction",
the economist Schumpeter once called it. Markets fail. And when they
fail there is bankruptcy, unemployment and social pain for those involved.

Perfect
markets with perfect information inducing rational consumers to make
rational choices in perfect harmony and equilibrium only exist within
apologetic economics textbooks. But the real world of capitalism is
not like that. Socialists do not begin from absurd assumptions but
from the capitalist system that confronts the working class. We do
not impose a perfect theory on reality but our theory comes out of
the reality we experience as a subject class. And as workers we know
that the wages system rations what we can and cannot have.

Scarcity
under capitalism is deliberate scarcity. Capitalist production only
takes place if there is a profit to be made. No profit means no production.
The deliberate destruction of food stuffs, the restrictions on the
amount of food being produced, the irrationality of the common agricultural
policy which takes farm land out of production and pays farmers not
to grow food: all these show how wrong the assumption of economic
scarcity is. Under capitalism, scarcity is invented.

And
there is a further point Socialists make against capitalism. The class
relations of production - the fact that the capitalist class own the
means of production to the exclusion of the rest of society - hold
back and restrain the forces of production. As a result, we have nearly
a billion workers unemployed throughout the world with billions more
starving. In a rational social system, labour would be usefully engaged
in producing for those who need food. Not under capitalism. Capitalists
cannot employ the unemployed workers because there is no profit, and
cannot feed the billions left starving because they have not got the
money to buy commodities, commodities which then have to be destroyed
to maintain markets and prices.

What
society could produce is restrained by the profit motive. And capitalism
has the potential to produce enough food, housing, energy and so on
in abundance, that is, to meet the needs of all society. The forces
of production - the raw resources, co-operative social labour, the
techniques of production: all these could be used to solve the vast
array of social problems facing the world today. Capitalism is not
interested in meeting human needs. Capitalism is not interested in
producing enough food, shelter, clothing and health care for everyone.

So
choice under capitalism means a choice constrained and delimited by
the market, which for the working class is no choice at all. The only
consumer capitalism is interested in is a paying consumer. Profit
is everything. Choice is only market choice. For billions of people
outside the limits of market choice, it means starvation, death through
disease and blighted lives. And for the working class as market consumers,
it is a form of rationing which forces them to buy, using what they
receive in terms of wages and salaries. Market choice for the working
class under capitalism is an illusion. In the labour market they have
to sell their labour-power or starve. The labour market, the wages
system, is exploitative and coercive. Wage slavery.

There
is never any "hard choice" to be made by the capitalist
class. They live a life of comfort and privilege. The "hard
choices" fall on the working class, whether it is the shutting
down of swimming pools in Hackney, the reduction of state hand-outs
to one-parent families on sink housing estates, or cutting back unemployment
benefit. When politicians say "we are going to make some hard
choices", workers know that collectively or individually
they are going to be kicked in the face. And it is because, under
capitalism, reforms can be taken away as quickly as they are given,
that reformism is a futile and pointless political gesture.

The
range of choice for the capitalist class is not hard. They are free
to choose a life of privilege and comfort from the exploitation of
the working class. The economist, Professor Milton Friedman, advisor
to dictators, an academic gunslinger who now admits that all his theories
were wrong, wrote a book praising the employers' freedom to choose.
He called his book FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. He forgot to add that for the
working class the only choice they have under capitalism is the freedom
to lose, the freedom to be a subservient and exploited class of wage
slaves.

The
capitalist class feel good. With the choice available to capitalists
in education, healthcare, food, houses and so on, who can blame them?
They are pampered by politicians with moist lips. They have their
Panglossian defenders in the media like Will Hutton, who cries out
from his perch, "we are living in the best of times, in the
best of all possible worlds" (THE OBSERVER, 22 Feb.2004).

Hutton
is proud to be "pro-capitalist" and he is rewarded
with access to the media denied to socialists, appointment to plum
jobs on government quangos, and the odd academic appointment here
and there. For class traitors there is always the prospect of 30 pieces
of capital. Let us not forget that German capitalism was the capitalist
model that Hutton, in his
dreadful book, "THE STATE WE ARE IN", wanted Tony Blair
to follow. Just when Hutton praised German capitalism, its economy
went into free fall. His stakeholder idea has been derided as unworkable
by the Blair government and trade unions alike. The TUC has now dropped
the absurd belief that there can be a "partnership"
between unions and the employers (THE TIMES, 1 March 2003).

Hutton's
servile chain binds him to the interests of capital. His chain of
servitude is made of 16-carat gold. His food bowl is filled with tasty
morsels from their table. His clipped wings flatter his owners, fanning
them with his own self-delusions about the system which imprisons
him in a gilded cage. If capitalism is the answer for Will Hutton,
then it must have been a bloody stupid question.

The
"hard choices" made by politicians are made only
within the context of commodity production and exchange for profit,
and the profit-making priorities of capitalism. For the working class
this is no choice at all since the decisions of politicians can only
be made in the interests of capitalism as a whole or the particular
interests of key sections of the capitalist class. The working class
has no interest in capitalism. Capitalism can never be made to run
in the interests of the working class.

The
working class does have a choice. The working class can choose to
stop voting for capitalist politicians - Labour, the Green Party,
the Lib Dem Party and the Conservatives. Workers can choose to become
socialists. Workers can choose to join a Socialist Party, like The SPGB. And workers can choose to replace
capitalism with Socialism, choose to replace the profit system with
production for use.

The
choice is easy. And the choice is yours. Only the working class has
the choice either to establish Socialism consciously and politically
or to continue to live as an exploited, subject class of wage slaves.

The
Sterility of Labourism

...
the Labour Party in seeking mass support had to attract people
who did not want capitalism changed but merely changes in capitalism.
From that moment their ideals were not merely hampered but hamstrung.
The need for popular support came into conflict with their avowed
aims. The Labour Party by thus accepting this society was forced
to work for it, not against it. So it repeats the age long story
of social reformism, the bartering of its beliefs and ideals
for votes.
SOCIALIST
STANDARD, September 1954.

Democracy
In The Trade Unions

For
many years governments, the media and members of trade unions have
concerned themselves with the way unions manage their internal affairs.
Some of the concern, particularly that of union members, has been
simply about establishing democratic methods but there were other
motives behind the Tory government's Acts of Parliament during the
1980s requiring ballots for the establishment of the "closed
shop", for the election of union officials, for renewing
the unions' right to have political funds, and for ballots to be held
for strike action.

Failure
to hold pre-strike ballots rendered unions liable to legal action
for damages brought by employers and to other financial penalties.
The Tory government of the time made no secret of their intention,
by these Acts, to curb and weaken the unions. The Tory Party and the
Liberal Democrats also hoped that some of the ballots about the political
levy would vote to end the levy and the Labour Party, dependent on
most of its income from that source, would be in difficulties. In
line with the pattern since the unions were first legalised, of alternate
tightening and relaxing of the laws governing them, the Labour Party
hoped to gain votes at a future general election by its pledge to
repeal these Acts. Much to the annoyance of the trade unions, once
in power the Labour Government did not repeal the Acts but merely
continued the actions of past Labour Governments in its assault on
the trade unions by using troops to break strikes and to support the
interests of business. Not surprisingly, some unions wondered why
they should use their political levy to support an openly hostile
and anti-working class political party.

The
anti-trade union legislation of the 1980s is worth some comment. Some
Tory politicians supported compulsory strike ballots in the naïve
belief that this would reduce the number of strikes. It hasn't. The
Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, in its
1968 Report, had already said this was a fallacious view. It had looked
at American experience and noted "that strike ballots are
overwhelmingly likely to go in favour of strike actions"
(par. 428). The Tories were not the first government to consider compulsory
strike ballots. The Wilson Labour Government of 1964-1970 adopted
In Place of Strife, drawn up by Barbara Castle, as the basis
for an Industrial Relations Act. For official strikes it took the
same line as the Royal Commission, but with an additional argument:

In
major disputes union members are very often more militant than their
leaders and are likely to be less closely in touch with the progress
and prospects of the negotiations. If the union leaders were always
obliged to hold a ballot when using the strike threat in negotiations,
they might well find their hands tied by a vote to strike in support
of a claim intended merely as a bargaining move at an early stage
of negotiation. If on the other hand the union leaders are ready
to call a strike without backing by their members but there is no
doubt about their support, nothing would be gained by demanding
a ballot (par. 97).

It
proposed, however, that if a major official strike involved "a
serious threat to the economy or the public interest" and it
was doubtful whether the union's members were in favour of the strike,
the Secretary of State should have power to order a ballot. After the
unions had objected to parts of In Place of Strife, an Industrial
Relations Bill was presented to Parliament but it had not been passed
when the Labour Party lost the 1970 General Election.

The
issue of the pre-strike ballot came to the fore in the 1984 miners'
strike because the Executive of the National Union of Mineworkers
refused to hold a national ballot, presumably because they were not
sure that it would get the 55 per cent majority required by rule.
The strike therefore came into conflict with the law but the National
Coal Board decided not to take the issue to court. Instead, court
action was taken by working members of the NUM who obtained an injunction
preventing the NUM from claiming that the strike was an official one.
The NUM was fined £200,000 for contempt of court. Through another
action by the working members of the NUM, most of its funds were sequestrated
and placed under the control of a receiver appointed by the court.

Union
voting methods have recently featured in reported cases of "ballot-rigging".
In 1985 the Transport and General Workers Union reluctantly decided
to hold a new ballot for the appointment of their General Secretary.
The media presented the issue of ballot-rigging in the TGWU in terms
of a struggle between 'left' and 'right', and recalled
the case of the Electrical Trade Union in 1961 when the High Court
found that there had been massive vote-rigging, by members of the
Communist Party, designed to keep a fellow Communist in office as
General Secretary. The court held the defeated candidate to have been
validly elected. At the time the Communist Party of Great Britain
disclaimed responsibility for the action of their members in the ETU
and proclaimed their adherence to democratic methods. The disclaimer
had a hollow ring in view of Lenin's explicit guidance to his followers
to get control of the unions by any and every means:

It
is necessary if need be, to resort to strategy and adroitness,
illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order
to penetrate into the trade unions, remain there and carry on communist
work within them at any cost.
Lenin, LEFT WING COMMUNISM, published by the CPGB, p 39

However
the CPGB in a letter to THE TIMES (16 September 1976) did make one
valid point about ballot-rigging: that members of the Labour Party
and the Tory Party had, on occasion, been equally guilty. The ETU
case led to that union adopting a new system for ballots to prevent
abuse, the whole ballot being conducted by an independent body, the
Electoral Reform Society.

It
remains to consider what is the attitude of socialists on all these
issues. Firstly, we favour democratic organisation and methods in
unions and elsewhere; we do not aim, by vote-rigging or other trickery,
to capture control of the unions and we are in favour of ballots to
decide all issues.

But
the socialist attitude goes far beyond this and is unique among political
parties in this country. Socialists are not interested in choosing
between 'good' and 'bad' leaders but in persuading the working class
to abandon the whole concept of leadership. As we said in the SOCIALIST
STANDARD of May 1912:

All
their militant strength must be based upon the knowledge of their
class position and the logical course dictated by that position. Therefore
at the outset the need for leaders does not exist. Only those who
do not know the way need to be led, and this very fact makes it inevitable
that those who are led will be entirely in the hands of those who
lead.

The
article went on to argue that the leader depends on the lack of knowledge
of those who are led and has an interest in maintaining that lack
of knowledge, not in getting rid of it.

On
the trade union field, the Socialist Party's attitude was highlighted
by a libel action brought against Party members by the Amalgamated
Society of Railway Servants, because of a statement in the SOCIALIST
STANDARD that the leaders had betrayed their members after the Executive
of the union had agreed to a settlement against the vote of members
employed on the North Eastern Railway. In spite of the fact that the
Executive did not consult the whole of the membership, the judge held
that the action of the Executive was covered by union rules and was
justified by the organisation's responsibility to look after the interests
of the membership. The judge awarded in favour of the union.

The
socialist view has always been that the members of a union should
at all times keep control of union policy and actions in their own
hands, and not allow freedom of action to executive or officials.
Not only should the decision to strike be by ballot of the members
but also the decision to accept the terms of settlement of a strike.
This acceptance of full responsibility by the members of unions involves
the need for them to understand the workings of capitalism and the
resulting 'economics' of strikes, and to take into account the fact
that over-riding power rests with those who control the machinery
of government, including the armed forces, and that state power is
always available to back the employers in the defence of capitalism.

As
it was put in an article in the SOCIALIST STANDARD (April 1919): "On
the economic field the masters are in a far stronger position than
the workers and can beat them any time they decide to fight to a finish".Whether
the government and the employers will think it desirable to "fight
to the finish" depends on a number of factors, including
whether trade is good and profits steady or whether there is a depression.
When trade is good, employers do not want the flow of profits to be
interrupted by a strike. But when sales and profits are falling, the
unions have little hope of putting pressure on employers by threatening
to close factories which the employers are closing anyway, either
temporarily or permanently.

This
can be illustrated by comparing the successful coal strike of 1974
with the failure of the coal strike in 1984. In 1974 British capitalism
was booming. Profits were high and rising; unemployment was at a very
low level of 600,000, less than one fifth of what it was in 1984.
Employers did not want their flow of profits to be stopped by the
coal strike. So much so that a small group of wealthy capitalists
met together secretly (it was reported in the press without disclosure
of names) and offered a gift of £2,500,000 (equivalent to £18
million at current prices) to the NUM as an inducement to settle the
strike. The offer was declined. The outcome of the situation as it
existed in 1974 was that in a short strike of four weeks the NUM gained
a substantial wage increase, whereas in the very different situation
of 1984-5 the strike lasted almost a year and was a total failure.

It
should be noted that what is "short" or "long"
with strikes depends on the industry. A power-station strike or a
telephone strike makes its impact instantly, but with a strike in
industries where there are large stocks in the pipeline, as with steel
and coal, it may take weeks before the union can see whether the cessation
of production is likely to exert pressure on employers generally.

It
only remains to add that, in the nature of capitalism, what trade
unions and strikes can achieve is always limited. In particular, trade
union action cannot lead to the emancipation of the working class
and the establishment of socialism.

Lessons
Of The General Strike

Throughout
the strike the General Council [of the TUC] closed its eyes
to the class conflict in which it was involved and insisted
that the issue was purely an industrial one. Not so the Government.
It realised clearly the class character of its own acts and
called for support from the un-class conscious by addressing
them as " the nation" and telling them that Parliament
and the constitution were threatened
... The two outstanding lessons of the General Strike were,
firstly, that while political power is in the hands of the capitalist
class, and until such time as the workers take it into their
own hands, they must expect defeat in industrial struggles that
threaten the interests of the whole capitalist class. Secondly,
the evils of leadership. To blame the General Council or call
them cowards and traitors solves nothing. To replace them by
other leaders is merely to invite continuous repetitions of
similar debacles. To be free of cowards, traitors, hypocrites,
fakirs, and even well intentioned mis-leaders, the workers must
see to it that their representatives are their servants, not
their masters, carrying out instructions, not giving them.
SOCIALIST STANDARD, September 1954

Trade
Unions and The SPGB

Background
The SPGB has only given support to Trade
Unions when we consider their actions to be in line with the general
interest of the working class. During the miners' strike of 1984 the
Party was divided over the issue of support for a strike which had
the unthinking backing of the capitalist left. A group within the
Party wanted to support the miners' strike and tried to distort the
Party's policy to this end. Camden Branch and North West London Branch
repudiated this opportunist attempt to get the party to support a
strike that was undemocratic, misguided, bound to fail, and not in
the interests of the working class as a whole, being fought over the
sectional interests of one group of workers at the expense of other
workers.

In
August 1984, Camden Branch circulated to Central Branch members a
statement about the position of the Party in respect to the miners'
strike. This circular is a record of what we said at the time and
a confirmation that political principle, not opportunism, is the watchword
of the Party.

The
1984 Miners' Strike
The SPGB,
the TRADE UNIONS and the
MINERS' STRIKE

1.
At its formation the Party thrashed out a considered statement on
the trade unions which was endorsed by Conference and Party Poll,
and was published in the 1905 Party Manifesto.

It
stated that the basis of the trade unions must be a clear recognition
of the position of the workers under capitalism and the class struggle
necessarily arising therefrom, and that all action by the unions tending
to sidetrack the workers from the only path that can lead to their
emancipation should be strongly opposed. Only action on sound lines
should be supported.

2.
In conformity with the Party's opposition to leadership, workers in
the unions were urged to keep control of union affairs in their own
hands; including the need for a ballot to decide on strikes and a
ballot to call strikes off. Apart from the democratic principle here
involved, there is an elementary need for such ballots in order to
ensure that the workers go out on strike together and go back together.
The holding of a pre-strike ballot deprives an anti-strike minority
of the excuse to go on working.

The
holding of a ballot on ending the strike obviates the bitter internal
dissension which accompanies a gradual, unorganised drift back to
work and which in the miners' 6-month strike in 1926 crippled the
Miners Federation for years through the formation of rival, breakaway,
unions.

The
Party has also consistently warned against the dangerous illusion
that unions can defeat the state power of those in effective control
of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, when those
in control decide that victory on a particular issue is vital to their
class interests.

3.
The major issue in the present miners' strike is the effort of the
National Union of Mineworkers to prevent the closure of uneconomic
pits and thus to maintain the number of men working in the mines.

Being
organised, like other unions, on the basis of serving the interests
of its own members, this policy not only ignores the realities of
capitalism, but takes no regard to the conflicting interests of other
workers.

Directly,
and through support of Labour Party policy, the N.U.M. has long been
committed to stopping the import of coal. How does replacing foreign
coal by coal produced by British miners preserve jobs for miners?
It simply means more jobs for British miners and fewer jobs for miners
in other countries.

Likewise
the N.U.M's policy is to convert power stations from oil to coal and
to expand the coal industry while cutting back on nuclear energy.

Other unions, on the same plea of saving the jobs of their members,
have other claims. Unions in the electricity industry and the steel
industry cross miners' picket lines on the excuse that they are saving
the jobs of their members.

4.
The N.U.M. claims that in fighting to preserve jobs for British miners
it is serving the interest of the working class in respect of creating
or preserving jobs for all workers. This means supporting the policy
of the Labour Party. Mr Scargill has gone on record with the claim
that the return of a Labour government would "get rid of unemployment
and create meaningful jobs".

This
betrays a total ignorance of the workings of capitalism. The varying
number of jobs available to the working class, here and in the rest
of the world, depends on variations from time to time in the market
demand for commodities at profitable prices.

There
is nothing such strikes can do to increase the number of jobs or rid
capitalism of unemployment.

5.
In accordance with the Party's commitment to bring the unions to a
clear recognition of the position of the workers under capitalism,
the Party has a continuous obligation to explain the facts of capitalism
and the need for Socialism to miners and all other workers.

Abolishing
Child Poverty:Charity or Socialism?

Abolish
child suffering by becoming a Socialist!

A
child who doesn't have enough food to eat, who has nothing other than
dirty water to drink, who lacks healthcare and can only dream about
having an education faces a future of extreme poverty where they will
struggle to survive.

A
child like this needs help. However help can only be provided if the
correct social framework exists. And that is Socialism - common ownership
and democratic control of the means of production and distribution
by all of society.

And
Socialism requires socialists. Through becoming a socialist, which
costs absolutely nothing, you can change the conditions of absolute
and relative poverty we all live under today. Politicians cannot bring
about this change. Neither can charities. Only the working class can
solve their own problem by abolishing capitalism and establishing
Socialism. Only Socialism can give them, and their community, the
chance of a real future free from poverty.

Abolish
child hunger by establishing Socialism!

Children
living in poor communities often come from families that go to bed
every night hungry - simply because they cannot grow enough food to
feed themselves. Poor people often struggle to farm dry and infertile
soil without adequate tools or fertilisers.

Through
establishing Socialism, we can make sure that these children, their
families and their whole community have enough to eat. Through the
establishment of common ownership and democratic control of the means
of production and distribution by all of society, Socialism can enable
communities to gain skills, tools and access to land which will mean
that they can grow enough food for everyone.

Abolish
child sickness by abolishing capitalism!

In
the world's poorest communities, simple illnesses such as diarrhoea
can kill. Without adequate healthcare, poor children continue to suffer
and die for the want of medicines that cost just a few pounds.

The
cause of this sickness is capitalism. Production is only undertaken
for profit. Profit is all that the capitalists are interested in.
In a rationally planned society of abundance, medicines would be available.
Health care would be available. Capitalism is deliberate scarcity.
Capitalism only knows or cares about paying customers.

Abolishing
capitalism means that a socialist society can ensure production takes
place simply to provide goods and services which are needed throughout
the world. Socialist production will ensure that children and their
communities have a safe, clean supply of water. And it also means
that Socialism can enable them to gain access to the healthcare that
could save their lives.

Abolish child illiteracy through free access!

Children who have been denied their education - either because they
are forced into employment at an early age or because there is no
education in their area - have little chance of escaping the poverty
that they were born into so long as there is commodity production
and exchange for profit.

Yet
free access in a Socialist society will help a child have an education
and learn the skill to develop their potential and flourish as human
beings. Socialism would also be able to tackle adult illiteracy, particularly
in the early years, because people would not be dependent upon employment.
Work in Socialism would be voluntary. Socialism would enable the whole
community to have access to the knowledge they need to take control
of their lives.

If charity is not the answer, what is?

The failure of charity is its continued existence, holding out its
begging bowl to workers who part with some of their wages in the hope
- and it is a hope of almost theological proportions - that suffering
and extreme poverty will be alleviated. It is a waste of money.

Charities
cannot change lives. Charities cannot solve the problems of child
poverty, ill health and illiteracy for one very simple reason. The
capitalist class control the means of production. Production is for
profit, not human need.

Charity
is not the answer.

The
answer is to become a socialist. Conscious political action towards
a socialist object is where the working class should be heading, not
the banality of Red Nose Day and its imitators. Each new socialist
is a dent in the capitalist system. It is one more shovel of dirt
emptied into capitalism's grave. The quicker that is filled, the quicker
the pressing social problems of the world can be tackled and resolved.

Chinese
Capitalism

The
first essential thing in writing a book about China's New Political
Economy is an awareness of what economic terminology characterises
capitalism and to have a clear understanding about the meaning of
Socialism. This would enable writers to avoid the pitfall of misapplying
the features of capitalism to Socialist society and to more clearly
record their detailed information in a way that makes sense.

When
Susuma Yabuki and Stephen M Harmer launched into their book, CHINA'S
NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY, they had made no attempt to acquaint themselves
with Marx's theory of primitive accumulation or his analysis of commodity
production.

They
remained seemingly unaware that the early 'five year plans', as with
the Soviet Union, were China's crude beginning on the road to building
a classically capitalist economy as described by Marx in VOLUME I
of CAPITAL, a system where goods and services are produced for sale
and profit.

On
page 1, Yabuki and Harmer deal with the argument that the state system
in China will collapse as it had done in the Soviet Union. They assert
that:

It
is true that Chinese Socialism is based on a nation-building model learned
from the Soviet Union. However in the process of freeing citizens from
Socialism and the planned economy it is wrong to conclude that
the precedent of break-up in the former Soviet Union bears significant
similarity to the situation in China.

This
statement contains all the fallacies common to people who have no
knowledge of Socialism. The ruling clique of post-1949 China may well
have borrowed the ideological claptrap of Leninism and modelled their
power structure on the Soviet police-state dictatorship. But this
has nothing at all to do with Socialism.

They
make a case that China started its break with centralised capitalism
in the 1970s, about 20 years before their Soviet role model. To them
this means freeing China from the planned economy of Socialism. This
only gets them into a deeper mess because, not only do they fail to
identify the system now existing in China, they are reduced to using
a contradiction in terms: "market Socialism".

Having
condemned the planned economy, the next 69 pages consist of detailing
elaborate plans for every area of China's capitalist economy. It is
related that the ninth 5-Year Plan (1996-2000) set a goal to raise
coal production. Large and medium-sized mines had operated at a loss
until March 1997 under the State Council's former Ministry of Coal
Industry. In the four years 1992-1996 the loss was reduced from Renminbi
5.75 billion to a mere Renminbi 400 million, and the writers comment:
"A return to profitable operation is expected for 1997"
(p68).

During
the period 1996-2000 it was planned that coal production would increase
at an annual rate of 2.3 per cent, reaching 1.45 billion tons, of
which 50 million tons would be exported (p65).

In
a section dealing with grain supply and populations, plans for both
stretch as far ahead as 2030.

The
book has intricate tables, charts and illustration on just about every
second page. The text consists largely of explaining their implications.
Thus the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences supplies information,
which states that:

Table
6.3 presents a hopeful forecast by some Chinese economists up to the
year 2050. By 2030 China becomes a 'middle-income country' (in some
areas equivalent to a high-income country) and by 2050 it reaches
'the middle-ranks' of high-income countries; thus the forecast sees
China materially realising the dream envisaged by Deng Xiaoping. The
vision for the year 2050 comprises ten elements (p55).

There
follows an itemised list of ten elements which include:

·
Catching up with the United States in the information industry - Number
2;
· The structure of employment changes; competition for employment
increases as the unemployment remains high - Number 6;
· Reform of State-owned enterprises has been completed; modernization
of agriculture is a new agenda item - Number 7;
· By 2030 industrialization is completed and thereafter pressure
on the natural environment lessens - Number 9.

"In
summary, this is a vision of the post-industrial society. It is a
dream of satisfying the desire to catch up with the world's advanced
countries" (pp55-56).

It
is quite clear that this whole "dream" agenda is
one for a developing capitalist country. In terms of social evolution
it is absurd to postulate Socialism preceding capitalism. Such an
idea stands history on its head. Clearly the system of employment,
classes and exploitation will be replaced by the higher stage of social
evolution when classes are abolished and production is directly for
use.

The
changing structure of employment and competition for jobs against
the threat of unemployment are conditions common to every capitalist
country and are uniquely characteristic of that system. This is what
Marx and Engels referred to as capitalism's "industrial reserve
army".

None
of the forecasted lines of development take into account anything
happening in the rest of the capitalist world.

Catching
up with the US information industry assumes that for 50 years America's
information technology will stand still. Possible conflicts in a world
of rivalry are not considered nor is changing technology in capitalism
generally, although this is a major factor behind competition and
conflict given the continuing class ownership of industry and resources.

No
thought is given to any possible growth of working class consciousness
in 30 or 50 years. It should not be taken for granted that workers
will remain docile and content to remain employees competing for jobs.

In
his AUTHORS'S PREFACE to the first edition of VOLUME I of CAPITAL,
Marx makes the point that: "The country that is more developed
industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own
future."

Environmental
Contamination

There
would be a huge increase in energy consumption if per capita consumption
for China's 1.2 bn people is ever raised to the level of advanced
countries. This implies a potential challenge to the limits of world
energy resources (p71).

We
are told that in the advanced countries there is a deepening awareness
of ecology and that governments are looking for a growth model to
replace the "big growth, big consumption and big population"
of the past.

The
statement that there would be a huge increase in world energy consumption
if Chinese per capita consumption was ever raised to that of advanced
countries, not only makes nonsense of China ever having been in advance
of capitalism, it also shows the disproportion and imbalance of commodity
production.

The
assertion that the advanced countries are aware of ecology and looking
for a better growth model is the reverse of reality. The one success
of the Kyoto Conference was in exposing American indifference.

In
China the three major elements damaging the environment at varying
levels are:

Sulphur
dioxide, coal dust, and industrial waste water has increased and decreased
during the 10-year period 1985-1995. During the mid-1980s the volume
of sulphur dioxide emissions was in the range of 12-13 million tons.
By 1995 it was approaching 20 million tons - an increase of 40 per
cent. Coal dust increased about 10 per cent. Industrial waste water
decreased somewhat more than 10 per cent (p73).

Assuming
an average annual growth rate of 4 per cent in GNP, by 2010 it is
forecast that sulphur dioxide emissions will have reached 37.24 million
tons. China is already exceeding 4 per cent annual growth. Sulphur
dioxide is the major cause of acid rain and air pollution. China relies
upon coal for three-quarters of its primary energy. The high sulphur
content from some regions " places an increasingly heavy
burden on the global environment".

By
far the greatest lesson to be learned here is that there can be no
national solution to the world problems produced by capitalism. Environmental
damage does not respect frontiers. A world solution alone is applicable.
The obsolescence of the national state where rival capitalists in
isolation carry on, in anarchic folly, doing things which affect the
world's population, demands to be dealt with.

The
only way forward for humanity is to co-ordinate the democratic use
of world resources for the common good. This means the end of competition
for markets and of the profit motive. Decisions to use renewable energy
resources cannot meaningfully be taken except on a world scale by
a conscious populace, owning the means of production in common. Consumption,
by and of itself, does not mean a better quality of life for the workers.
It co-exists with congestion, increasing stress and job insecurity,
with the trade-cycle of boom, glut and recession always to be reckoned
with.

Regarding
population, China has adopted a policy of restriction based on coercion
from the top, showing again the hierarchic nature of Chinese capitalism.
A general free-for-all prevails worldwide in which there is no enlightened
involvement of ordinary people in decision-making.

What
these figures really show is that Chinese state enterprises are subject
to the same standard, the expectation of profit, and are measured
in exactly the same monetary terms, as private capitalism. Even the
term enterprise, meaning business undertaking, is applied both to
state and private capitalism.

With
all the book's graphs and figures, what in fact is being charted is
the steady progression of China as a fully-fledged capitalist country.
That China covers a vast area of over 9.5m sq km and has a population
of 1,275 million (Dec. 2000), living in provinces which are in effect
federated countries, does not deny the capitalist nature of its entire
landmass despite widely differing levels of development and income.

It
is only necessary to read the figures at the back of the book which,
from 1979 to 1995, detail the many hundreds of billions of yen that
Japan has loaned to China, to see the gradual emergence of another
major capitalist power grooming itself for an onslaught into the competitive
jungle of the world market.

To
prefix the names of the institutions of capitalism with the word "Peoples",
as in Peoples State, Peoples Bank, Peoples Press and so on, proves
nothing. The people who occupy the commanding positions in the social
relations of production under which these institutions operate are
the capitalist class or their political agents. It is the purpose
of Socialism to abolish this system.

Theory and Reality

In
an appendix which lists years during which particular events took
place, in the year 1987 we are told: "The Thirteenth Party
Congress adopts the Theory of the Initial Stage of Socialism".
Since the whole purpose of the book is to trace and detail the break
with 'Socialism' and the spread of 'liberalization'
(a pseudonym for the market economy), it might be of some interest
if the authors could tell us when Socialism is supposed to have existed
in China. It should be noted, of course, that to adopt the 'theory'
is very different from installing the reality. Also, details of the
contents of this 'theory of the initial stage' would be revealing.

Among
the events recorded for 1989 are:-
· Peoples Daily carries the article -
Our Country Has Already Become a Net Aid Receiving Country.
· Martial law is declared in some sections of Beijing municipality.
· Suppression by military force is begun against the democracy
movement - June 3-4 (p286).

In
August 1991, "In the former Soviet Union an attempted coup
d'etat by the old conservative faction fails; the Soviet Communist
Party is disbanded." This last incident must have sent a
cold shudder down the backs of China's ruling elite.

The
reference to 'conservative faction' is proof that even within
one-party dictatorships dissent finds expression inside the party.
Factions also exist inside the multi-party versions of capitalism.
The power struggles are much the same.

The
wording of a document issued in May 1992 has a special significance:
"Views of the Communist Party Central Committee on Expanding
Reform and Liberalization to take the economy to a Higher and more
Splendid Stage." Reform and liberalisation are standard forms
of double-talk which simply mean changing from nationalisation to
private enterprise and the loosening of central state bureaucracy
in favour of open competition. The market system works better for
some capitalists if the weak go to the wall without state protection.
What is significant is that China managed to engineer the move to
liberalised private capitalism without the so-called Communist Party
losing power as it had done in Russia.

To
clinch our case that the theory is made to fit the facts by double-talk,
the last entry for 1992 reads: "Convening of the Chinese Communist
Party's Fourteenth Party Congress. The theory of 'the Socialist market
economy' is embraced." In November 1993 the CP Central Committee
plenum adopted "Fifty Articles for a Market Economy".After
giving a figure for official foreign exchange reserves of US $140
billion at the end of 1997 we are told: "It is estimated that
an amount of foreign exchange equivalent to official reserves is in
the hands of private Chinese individuals and deposited in Chinese
banks" (p246).

Capitalism Continues

All
the evidence shows there has been a continuity in China from the early
years of 'Communist' party power to the present time. It has
been the continuity of capitalism from its crude beginning with a
peasant agrarian background through successive stages of industrial
capital accumulation and the growth of commodity production, to becoming
a major player in the market world of competition and militarism.

This
capitalist continuity can be demonstrated by reference to a pamphlet
published in 1969 by the Foreign Languages Press, Peking. Under the
title, CHINA'S RMB, ONE OF THE FEW MOST STABLE CURRENCIES IN THE WORLD,
this pamphlet lauds the THOUGHTS OF MAO TSETUNG and elevates him to
a super-human level, in much the same way as Lenin and Stalin were
elevated in Russia.

In
a chapter headed A COUNTRY WITHOUT DEBTS, details are given about
six national bonds issued from 1950 to 1958 to "raise capital
funds". These totalled nearly 4 billion RMB, plus interest
of nearly a further billion. The boast is made that the total debt
was paid by the end of 1968. During this period " the
Soviet Union, which was then led by Stalin, extended some loans to
China, the principal and interest of which totalled 1,406 million
new roubles". These debts were redeemed ahead of time in
1965 (p6).

Then
there was a falling out between these two countries both falsely claiming
to be Socialist. "China was hit by natural calamities for
three successive years from 1959 to 1961 and the perfidious Soviet
revisionist renegade clique suddenly stopped its economic and technical
assistance to China and withdrew the Soviet experts causing great
losses to China's economy" (p10).

A
few lines illustrate more vividly than anything how the norms of capitalism
are accepted in China: "China successfully exploded its first
atom bomb in 1964 and set off a new hydrogen bomb in 1968. On the
basis of increased production, the material and cultural life of the
Chinese people has improved enormously; markets are thriving and prices
are stable" (p7).

Now,
if we return to Yabuki and Harmer's book and focus on p278, we find
that in the years 1979 to 1998 China engaged in four loan programmes
with Japan, borrowing a total of more than 2 trillion yen. "In
each case terms are thirty years for repayment." The four
huge loans were to finance the building and development of infrastructure
projects including railways, ports, electric power, telecommunications,
aviation and urban transportation.

So,
more than 50 years after the national bond issues and its loans from
Soviet Russia, despite its boast of being "debt free",
China is still heavily in debt and will be until about 2028, unless
a weakened yen due to the slump in Japan helps to speed up repayment.
Thus China is still raising capital funds.

To append the name of Socialism to these procedures is ridiculous.
It should not be forgotten that the repayment of capital loans and
interest comes out of the hides of workers from the surplus value
they produce in excess of their wages.

All
the modifications to China's industrial, commercial, banking and trading
laws were made with one aim in view: membership of the World Trade
Organisation. The Fifty Articles adopted in 1993 by the Chinese 'Communist'
Party were clearly aimed at gaining an open market economy. Liberalisation
meant that joint stock companies would create a legal corporate person
" effectively separating the ownership rights of the
investors from the property rights of the corporation as well as the
government from the enterprise"(p41). In October 1996 China
declared it would henceforth not " implement any policies
or laws not in conformity with WTO principles". In December
it complied in advance with IMF article 8 regarding convertibility
of the RMB for settlement of trade and service transactions (p237).

At
the time of the publication of Yabuki and Harmer's book (1999) China
had still not succeeded in joining the WTO. This did not happen until
November 2001, after 15 years of negotiations. Commenting on the event,
Dr Hussain of the London School of Economics said:

China
is already the seventh largest exporter in the world ... VW are the
largest car producers in China ... China is the second largest recipient
of foreign investment after the USA so it's already a major player
(TELETEXT, 11 December 2001).

It
was also noted that China has the potential to become a superpower
to rival the US. That the American ruling clique had long feared Chinese
economic and military expansion is shown by US policy over many years.
A 21-year trade embargo was lifted in June 1971 and 30 years later
China has been admitted to the WTO.

Past
and Present

After
June 1989 when the Chinese government used tanks to crush a students'
rebellion in Tiananmen Square killing hundreds (at the lowest estimate),
the US propagandists played the human-rights card as often as possible.

Of
the numerous examples of contempt for so-called human rights and of
indifference to human misery and suffering on the part of American
capitalism, none surpasses that
contained in a CHANNEL 4 NEWS report (3 March 2003). In 1942 Japan
used anthrax against China.

From
Shanghai along the rail line to Tangjia in the Zhejiang Province,
an area the size of Britain, 60 years later people who were then children
still suffer disfigurement. Flesh turned black and fell away. In one
area, 50,000 people died and 300,000 became ill from mysterious diseases.
Typhoid and cholera were also used.

CHANNEL 4 used the report of Amelia Hill of THE OBSERVER who stated
that:

In
a post-war pact, the Japanese handed the allies their knowledge of
biological warfare. It was a deal which allowed Japan to deny its
past [and gave] immunity from prosecution.

The
allies, America, Britain and Russia, thereby traded the lives and
extreme suffering of hundreds of thousands of Chinese people (also
allies) to gain Japanese knowledge of biological weapons and let the
Japanese state keep quiet about it.

If
China is a 'major player' today it is not just in terms of its WTO
membership, or its exports which, in 1995, already accounted for 3
per cent of the world's total, or its imports at 2.6 per cent of the
total. China's vast potential for industrial expansion is to be seen
in association with its possession of nuclear weapons and the ability
to deliver them.

The
American-imposed trade embargo dates back to the time of the Korean
War, when China supported the North against America in the South.
There was a time when it was touch-and-go as to whether the US forces
would cross the Yalu River and extend the war into China. President
Truman made it clear that "nuclear weapons would only be used
if Moscow or Peking widened the war" (PENGUIN HISTORY OF
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, pp 488-489).

Capitalism
continues to create threatening situations around the world. Today
China plays host to diplomats from the US, Russia and Japan to discuss
North Korea's nuclear weapons policy. The Korean War, 50 years ago,
solved nothing.

How
New Labour Champions Workers' Rights

The EU's proposed new Charter of Fundamental Rights includes certain
clauses which may give some legal rights to workers with regard
to industrial issues. The Charter proposes to guarantee the right
to strike, also protection from unfair dismissal and discrimination.

In
Europe, maybe - but not in Blair's business-friendly Britain.
In
a TV interview, Denis MacShane - the arch-Blairite Minister
for Europe - declared that he was "very happy to hear
that this Charter will NOT have any effect in British law ...
I welcome the [German Minister's] statement that the Charter
of Fundamental Rights has no impact on British domestic law"(BBC
NEWSNIGHT, 18 May 2004). And to make quite sure that we all
got the message, he repeated this emphatically. Now there's
a man who knows which side his bread's buttered on.

America's
Presidential Farce

The
American presidential election is inextricably bound up with violence,
war, bombing, torture and murder, in a word, state-terrorism. The
lying pretext for bombing and invading Iraq - to liberate the Iraqi
people from a brutal dictatorship - is exposed by the use of Abu Ghraib
prison by the Americans, to inflict torture, sexual humiliation and
murder on dissidents, in the same way and in the same place that was
used by Saddam Hussein.

Undoubtedly,
the major reason for the massive hyping-up of the D-day 'celebrations'
was to take the heat off Iraq, by filling the media with a deluge
of other 'heroic attractions'. In the days when America was atom-bombing
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, President Truman said: "the buck stops
here". Today, although G W Bush as head-of-state is Commander-in-Chief
of all US armed forces, the "buck" stopped with a
few lower-ranking army commanders. Rumsfeld, Defence Secretary, took
"responsibility" without taking the consequences.

Bush
went to Rome on 4 June, ostensibly to commemorate the liberation by
American forces 60 years earlier. This fell in nicely with the saturation
coverage of the Normandy landings of 1944 and was a photo-opportunity
not to be missed. He visited the Pope in a delicately handled piece
of diplomacy which even TV news readers saw could play well to gain
Catholic votes in America.

It
was also noted that his Democrat challenger for the White House, John
Kerry, is a Catholic who, like Bush, supported the war against Iraq,
which the Pope opposed. The fact that opportunism was the name of
the game could be seen from Bush and his crew seeking to draw parallels
between World War II and his orgy of death and destruction in Iraq.

The
saddest parallel of all is that, 60 years ago, workers were prepared
to wave their masters' flags in support of capitalism and to fight
its wars, and in 2004, failing to see that war has not made the world
"safe for peace and democracy", are still waving
flags and fighting wars.

Bush
also sought to play on General Eisenhower's example of a man who became
President after being a war leader. The continuity of American militarism
and reverence for armed force has been a major factor in moulding
American nationalism, which has vastly intensified since the end of
WWII. Each generation of young men and, increasingly, women has found
uniforms and military hardware waiting for them. Every postwar US
President has built up or maintained America's nuclear arsenal - including
Kennedy who gave the world the Cuban missile crisis.

The defeat of Hitlerism in Europe has failed to make the world peaceful.
There has been an endless series of wars in every area of the world.
America, Britain and France have either been involved in, or supplied
the arms, for most of them. All three were involved in Vietnam and
share responsibility for the 3 million killed. The leaders of these
countries have the brazen hypocrisy to rant about "our civilisation".
In the June ceremonies and speeches about D-Day, nobody - Bush, Blair,
Berlusconi and, least of all, veterans wearing their masters' medals
- nobody asked where Hitlerism came from. It came out of the conditions
left by World War One, when defeated German capitalism was seeking
its place in the sun. Hitler was the man of whom Winston Churchill
wrote in 1935: "If our country were defeated I hope we should
find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back
to our place among the nations".
Emrys Hughes, WINSTON CHURCHILL IN WAR AND PEACE, 1949, p139

Quite
early in the Presidential campaign, John Kerry was making capital
out of his active military record compared to that of Bush. He said
of the Bush offensive: "It's oil - we will change the policy
motivated by oil" (BBC1, 7 April 2004). America's dependency
on imported oil would be the same under Kerry. He is not an alternative
to Bush - he is simply an alternative Bush, just as Bush was an alternative
Clinton. Kerry summed himself up when he said: "America should
not go to war because it wants to but because it has to"
(CHANNEL FOUR, 20 June 2004). A meaningless distinction: when capitalism
produces a war situation, the two become the same.

The
close unity between both Republican and Democrat parties and military
force, and the support for this by a brain-washed populace, can be
seen in the continuity of policy between the Truman (Democrat) and
the Eisenhower (Republican) administrations. The election of a war-time
General as President betrayed the intensity of patriotism. Eisenhower
installed John Foster Dulles as his Secretary of State, the post held
by ex-General Colin Powell today. Dulles was a rabid anti-Russian,
and it was under this administration that the hydrogen bomb was first
produced. Their military strategy was a nuclear one and in early 1955,
when 'communist' China bombarded the offshore islands of Quemoy and
Matsu, "the USA called in its Pacific fleet and even threatened
the use of nuclear weapons against the mainland" (LONGMAN
GCSE WORLD HISTORY, 1994 edition, p172).

Despite
the ominous proliferation of nuclear weapons, America remains the
only country to have dropped atomic bombs on human targets. As recently
as the launch of the so-called 'war against terrorism', the Bush administration
decided to keep the nuclear option open. It was George W Bush who
unilaterally tore up the Test Ban Treaty.

In
the summer of 1963, the former President Truman gave an interview
to Daniel Snowman. This was published in THE TIMES (31 July 1995)
under the heading: "I never lost a wink of sleep over Hiroshima."
In the course of this interview, Truman said: "I've never
lost any sleep over any decision I've had to make." As Daniel
Snowman noted, "that clearly included the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki".

Fifty years later, THE TIMES carried another article which said: "Yet
by April 1945, when Harry Truman succeeded to the Presidency, the
Japanese were on their knees" (5 August 1995). This TIMES
article gave details of the terrible intensity of 'conventional'
bombing of mainland Japan: one particular raid on 8 March 1945 used
napalm "... creating a firestorm as evil as anything experienced
in Hamburg or Dresden, and leaving 83,000 dead in a single night".
The city on the receiving end of this insanity was Tokyo.

Truman's
modern-day successors - Clinton, Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Blair, Hoon
and Straw - are also unlikely to have lost any sleep over their massive
bombing of Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Just as prevailing myth has
it that atom-bombing Japan actually saved lives, so Bush and Blair
promote their own myths about making the world safe by bombing.

Sovereignty
is always the concern of the ruling class.The working class have no
country and no sovereignty. A class that sells itself piecemeal on
the labour market for wages is not even in sovereign control of its
being as people.

On
June 28 2004, CHANNEL FOUR NEWS did an extended news programme dealing
in detail with the Iraq war and its aftermath. Paul Bremer, who had
been America's boss-man, conducted a brief ceremony of hand-over to
an unelected provisional government, a mere symbolic ending of occupation,
leaving Iraq in the grip of violence and facing many years of the
presence of foreign forces: 140,000 US troops, plus 200,000 other
coalition forces. Bremer imposed US edicts restricting the interim
government, and installed 26 US-appointed inspectors in each ministry,
including oil and security.

Giving
figures for the numbers of people killed, the programme interviewed
people in Iraq with access to information. It was estimated that 20,000
Iraqi soldiers died; 850 US troops were killed, mostly after Bush
declared the war over; at least 11,000 Iraqi civilians, including
750 women and 840 children; and each month 1,000 US wounded soldiers
go to Germany for hospital treatment. The US Department of Defence
and the UK's Ministry of Defence are not being very forthcoming with
figures. One US soldier in seven returns home with mental disorders,
24 committed suicide in Iraq and 7 others did so after returning home.

The
American people are prevented from seeing the coffins of US military
dead as the media are tightly controlled. However, when the SEATTLE
TIMES published a picture of coffins draped in the flag, this was
syndicated and reproduced around the world. The photographer, a private
individual, was sacked. So much for America's so-called freedom and
democracy!

In
Baghdad, the hospitals are crammed with bystander victims of bomb
attacks and other violence. 100 security personnel in Iraq have been
killed in a year. Almost all the larger western charities have fled.
Only 10% of Iraqi houses have drinking water, and the electricity
supply is not up and running. Dozens of companies, mostly American,
are benefitting from reconstruction, with a budget of $56 billion.
Jon Snow, who did the commentary, said of Iraq that it is "the
most dangerous country in the world from which to report".
With terror incidents increasing also in Saudi Arabia, this is what
Bush calls "liberation".

American
capitalism now straddles the globe in much the same way as British
capitalism did a century and more ago. The role of world-policeman
(unelected) was first proclaimed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, four
years after America overtook Britain as the world's leading commercial
trading country. The continuing struggle for world markets and for
dominance of natural resources, such as oil and gas, must today be
seen against the background of vastly more sophisticated scientific
militarism. The fact that this ruthless quest for dominance and profits
is shrouded in the garb of a phoney ideology is nothing new. Bombing
people into 'democracy' and then torturing them in the name
of liberation and freedom serves only to expose the hypocrisy hiding
the real motives of a predatory class.

Bush
prattles on endlessly about the "axis of evil" in
the eloquent way for which he is notorious, just as Reagan had focussed
hatred on the "evil empire". In their self-righteous
propaganda, they never see the misery and suffering they have inflicted.
The war against Iraq was embarked on upon the lying pretext that WMD
(weapons of mass destruction) could be used against the US or the
UK "in 45 minutes". This was changed to become a
war for regime change, to get rid of a monstrous tyrant whom America
and its allies had armed and supported for at least eight years in
his war against Iran.

Bush
at first poured scorn upon the United Nations and "old Europe"
in the expectation that with "overwhelming force",
Iraq would be a push-over and the pickings would be theirs. After
more than a year, with Bush forced to involve forces from many other
nations, he had to crawl back into favour with the UN and Europe.

Socialists'
opposition to war remains the same whether it has the UN's blessing
or not, but then ours is a principled position, one which is not driven
by oil but by working class interest.

The
concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay gives the lie to any concern
about democracy or the much vaunted rule of law. The Bush administration
invented special categories for more than 600 prisoners held for over
two years, without charge or trial, or even access to legal advice.
They were not prisoners of war but "armed combatants",
not subject to national or international law and without rights of
any kind.

Bush
had worked on the basis that the war in Iraq was over, but the war
against unspecified terrorism is ongoing so he could do as he pleased.
It took a ruling from the US Supreme Court at the end of June 2004
to challenge the President's right to do as he wants, and to declare
that the prisoners should be held in America and have access to legal
advice. Fortuitously perhaps, Bush's law was condemned by the Supreme
Court just at the moment when the news was dominated by the power
'hand-over' in Iraq.

American
Presidential elections do not present the American working class with
a choice between capitalism and Socialism but merely a choice between
two individuals, both committed to continuing capitalism. Socialist
understanding has to make its own way against the poisonous indoctrination
of patriotic nationalism but the insane consequences of capitalism
must finally work against it.

And
They Call It "Democracy"

One
of Paul Bremer's last acts was to re-introduce Saddam's 1984
law banning all strikes in Iraq. He did so in order that workers
in Iraq would not jeopardise the lucrative contracts of the
mostly US companies now working there. Bremer wanted to muzzle
the Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions in order, in the words
of Robert Fisk (The Independent, 4 July 2004), "to protect
big business". So much for the rhetoric of "democracy".

Blair
prattles on about "democracy" in Iraq. Where
is his criticism of the law banning strikes in Iraq? Silence.
The war in Iraq was all about oil. Democracy only begins with
the establishment of socialism.

Profit
From Terrorism

When
foreign mercenaries were butchered by a mob in the Iraqi town
of Fallujah, the media highlighted the rich pickings being made
in Iraq by private security companies like Blackwater Security
Consulting, based in North Carolina. Blackwater has been awarded
more than $57 million in Pentagon contracts since 2002. Setting
up your own private army is very profitable. More than $20 billion
- a third of the US Army operating budget in Iraq and Afghanistan
- is paid to contractors (THE TIMES, 2 April 2002).

So
there is profit in terrorism, although the charred remains of
the bodies hanging unceremoniously from a bridge are a potent
symbol that such profits come at a price. But it will not be
the owners of the private security companies in Iraq who will
have to pay it. The price, as usual, is borne by the working
class.

War,
Principle and Socialism

The SPGB has always taken a particular stand
on war. The Party has opposed war on the grounds of class interest
and class internationalism. The working class do not own raw resources,
they do not have trade routes to defend and they do not have spheres
of influence to maintain. The working class have nothing but their
labour power to sell.

When
the capitalist state forced conscription onto the working class, Socialists
refused to be conscripted. Wars are fought over capitalist interests
or are caused by capitalism's competing interests. To abolish wars
requires the conscious and political action of a working class majority.
A socialist has a principled duty to oppose war and have no part in
its execution. In both World Wars, this meant a collision with the
capitalist state. In the Second World War, as in the First, members
of The SPGB were threatened with imprisonment and many went on the
run to escape conscription.

We
have in the Party archives the application by one of the Party members,
Harry Young, to be registered as a conscientious objector. His application
is dated 16 June 1941 when he was forty years of age. Below is his
statement, argued as a Socialist and a member of The SPGB:

I
object to National Service on Socialist grounds. In my view War, like
other modern social evils (unemployment, poverty, a great deal of
disease -etc), is the outcome of the Capitalist system of society.
So long as the social institution of Private Property exists wars
will be fought. Victories or defeats, therefore, make little fundamental
difference to the position of the mass of the people. It is utterly
impossible for me to reconcile these views with any form of support
for war.The
only course I can reasonably adopt is to keep plodding steadfastly
on; endeavouring to explain to my fellow-man that - until such time
as a majority of people (i.e. the working class) understand, and therefore,
want socialism, no amount of bloodshed, slaughter or mutual destruction
can alter their hard lot, in peace as in war. More, it cannot even
achieve Democracy, rather the contrary, as the previous war proved
(1914-18), it produces bloody, brutal dictatorships. When the people
understand this, then a peaceful transformation from Capitalism to
Socialism is not only possible - it is highly probable. My whole life,
since leaving the elementary school, has been closely connected with
the Labour Movement, beginning with the "Herald League"
formed by the late Mr George Lansbury M.P. which I joined in 1918.
In 1920, I joined the Communist Party, when it was formed, and became
one of its officials, spending some years in Moscow. Subsequently,
it became apparent to me that the so-called "collective security"
policy of the Communist Party was simply a war policy in the interests
of the Soviet Government. The party which opened my eyes to this was
the one which I have since joined: The SPGB.

To me, therefore, to take part in supporting the war would be a complete
denial and repudiation of everything I have tried to do for the past
twenty years. It would certainly be contrary to everything I have
preached on the public platform, involving the most contemptible and
nauseating hypocrisy. I recognise that my opinions may be very unpopular,
but at least they are sincere, and merit recognition as such. I therefore
ask the same privilege as I readily accord to others, the right to
state my case and viewpoint. Any form of National Service would be
tantamount to renunciation of my standpoint, and with all due regard
to the views of others, this I cannot do. I am naturally aware that
loyalty to convictions frequently entails material sacrifice, thus
in 1930 I was practically hounded out of the postal service on account
of unorthodox opinions (I append the relevant papers). Only too well
do I know how difficult it is for one of my views to obtain employment
in peace time. Therefore I am compelled to state a categorical objection
to National Service. (sgd) H. E. E Young P.S. I enclose references
of personal character covering last ten years, including one from
Mr John Jagger M.P.

The
late Comrade Young won his case against conscription. When he was
accused of "cowardice", he told his detractors that
he drove a fire engine through streets engulfed in fire and raining
with bombs.

The
late Comrade Young was one of the group of Socialists who were expelled
from the Clapham-based Socialist Party on a trumped-up charge, for
continuing to use the full name of the party in the class struggle,
and who in June 1991 went on to reconstitute The SPGB.

Lessons
Of The Russian Revolution

Without
reservation, the Socialist Party refuted the claim that the
Bolsheviks could introduce Socialism in Russia. We were critical
of their aims and methods. Socialism was impossible before large
scale, industrial production had developed, and with it also,
a dispossessed working class population had been formed and
won over to Socialism ...

...
If there are lessons to be learned from Russia and other parts
of the world where capitalism is administered in the name of
Socialism and by men who sprang from the workers it is that
the only way to Socialism is through working class understanding
and democracy.

Founding
Statement, May 1904

FROM
The SPGB'S ARCHIVES

EXTRACTS
FROM CIRCULAR
To the Members of the S.D.F Dated May 23, 1904.

Comrades,
For years those who hold the views given in our previous manifesto
have been working inside the Movement with a view to bringing the
various facts before the members of the rank and file, and up to the
issue of that circular were hoping that even yet it would be possible
to remodel the S.D.F. and bring its policy in line with its principles.
Against this, however, was the fact that the Executive Council, largely
influenced by H. Quelch, who, as we have shown in our previous circular,
is dominated by the Trade Union leaders and others who have a financial
grip upon the Twentieth Century Press, opposed in every way free
and open discussion of our position. All criticisms of the policy
or the actions of the Executive Council were turned into questions
of personal abuse in order to hide the real issue.
Now, Comrades, in building up a strong Socialist Party it is indispensable
that the fullest discussion on all matters affecting the position
of the Organisation should be allowed, and it is also obvious that
the members of a Militant Revolutionary Party cannot consent in any
way to have their opinions stifled by the actions of their E.C. But
it is now evident that all further education of the members, either
in relation to the facts of the situation, or in the essential principles
upon which the Federation is based, is impossible within that body.
Realising this, the signatories to the aforementioned circular met
together with others at Sidney Hall, Battersea, on Sunday, May 15,
1904, to consider the whole position, and carried with enthusiasm
the following resolution:-

That
this meeting has arrived at the conclusion that the only way to put
the principles and policy embodied in the circular into operation
is to leave the S.D.F. in a body and send a manifesto round the branches
explaining our position and calling upon all those who are in favour
of the same to join us in forming a straight, uncompromising Socialist
Party.

In
pursuance of this resolution, we appeal to all members who believe
that the economic forces working through the development of capitalist
society demand the formation of a Revolutionary Socialist Party; who
believe that the emancipation of the working-class can only be obtained
by the combined action of the members of that class, consciously organised
in a Socialist Party, and who recognise that the Class-Struggle can
alone be the basis of such a party; that therefore Social Democrats
must avow themselves in opposition to all non-Socialist parties and
politicians; and who realise that the S.D.F. has ceased to merit the
name of such a party, to throw in your lot with us and to help us
in building up a strong and healthy fighting party, organised on definite
class lines for the emancipation of the working class from the wage-slavery
under which they exist - from the capitalist society of which they
are the victims.

Appeals
for Socialist Unity, 1904 and 2004

They
say that "what goes round, comes round", that history
has a trick of repeating itself. That has certainly been the experience
of The SPGB. In its early days, the Party
was faced with the Second International's demand that, in any country
where there was more than one 'Socialist' party, these organisations
must try to unite. In our last issue (no.52), we described how this
policy had worked out in the United States where De Leon's Socialist
Labor Party made several abortive attempts to unite with the, reformist,
Socialist Party of America.

In
1904 The SPGB was confronted with similar pressures to unite with
the Social Democratic Federation, an organisation which had shown
itself to be opportunist, reformist and undemocratic. The SDF leadership
had deliberately and unscrupulously chosen to expel those who went
on to found the new, Socialist, Party - a Party which declared from
the start that it was going to be uncompromising in its work for Socialism
and only for Socialism, and which decided as a matter of principle
that the Socialist Party was to be "independent of and opposed
to all other political parties".

Within
a few months, The SPGB had declared its position on the question of
'Socialist Unity' (SOCIALIST STANDARD, December 1904 - see
excerpts in our CENTENARY BULLETIN):

We
are all for unity. We believe that unity of party organisation based
upon unity of purpose, unity of principle, and unity of method is
the one thing desirable ...[But] in the field of Socialist thought
and Socialist action there are today two distinct tendencies to be
found: the revolutionary and the revisionist ... today the Socialist
movement has been overtaken by a wave of revisionism...
... Unity is an important factor in the growth of a party, but it
is not the most important. Better far to have a party, however small,
with common principles and a common end, than a party, however large,
which is bound by no tie save party interest. We, therefore, who differ
from these other parties in essential principles - inasmuch as we
accept the principle of the class struggle while they do not - cannot
consent to unite our forces with theirs.

Move
forward in time, to the present day, and we find ourselves again being
urged to join forces and unite with others who claim to be 'Socialists'.
Such calls come mainly from members of the (Clapham-based) Socialist
Party, usually writing "in a personal capacity".
One such appeal was the letter we recently published from C Skelly
(see The SPGB, no 51), a member of that Party. His was not
the only such approach that has been made to us by people who clearly
seem to be unable to tell Stork from butter, to distinguish between
a utopian, confused, "all things to all men", opportunistic
outfit, and The SPGB which bases its case
and its policy on The SPGB's DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES.

As stated in December 1904, the only sort of unity worth seeking is
that where we would be certain of "unity of purpose, unity
of principle, and unity of method". Today there are many
organisations claiming to be Socialist. For most of them the term
'Socialism' is an empty concept, often left undefined, but variously
suggesting these days nationalised public services, or a state-run
welfare system and a policy of being kind to the poor.

As
for the Clapham-based Socialist Party, the fact is that from the time
in 1984 when they adopted a Conference resolution of an anarchist
nature - declaring that Socialism entailed "the immediate
abolition of the state" - they had thrown overboard one of
The SPGB's key principles, one dealing with the question of method:

That
as the machinery of government including the armed forces of the nation
exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the
wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise consciously
and politically for the conquest of the powers of government .. in
order that this machinery including these forces may be converted
from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation ...

Not
only did they abandon this principle but their members seem to see
no conflict of principle when they take part in 'anti-capitalism'
protests and anti-war demonstrations, or support democratic reform
movements. The SPGB however as a revolutionary party has only one
aim - the establishment of Socialism. It is not the business of Socialists
to try to improve or reform capitalism - there are plenty of other
organisations who see this as their mission in life. All our efforts
are focussed on working to build a strong, united, democratic, political
movement for the overthrow of capitalism.

Those
like Mr Skelly, who urge us to unite with their Party, would have
us unite with a Party which itself lacks unity. It has among its members
some who reject the class struggle principle, and especially the clauses
in The SPGB's PRINCIPLES which commit us to political action and to
being a Party "independent of and opposed to all other political
parties ...". Among their members are those who urged support
for the reformist and nationalist Polish movement, Solidarnosc. Among
their members are those who want their Party to ally itself with other
organisations that claim to be Socialist, regardless of whether these
would accept the principle of political action to achieve Socialism.

They
have had among their members and activists some who are anarcho-communists
or 'libertarian' socialists. Others there were those who advocated
council communism or industrial unionism as a means of achieving Socialism.
There were those too whose big idea was (and probably still is) to
build 'socialistic' organisations such as cooperatives, as a means
of gradually ousting capitalism: a sort of latter-day Bernstein argument,
that capitalism can be got to 'evolve', step by step, painlessly,
into Socialism.

Among
their members too are to be found some who argue that Socialism will
still require police, law-courts and jails, even though they are committed
as a Party to the anarchist formula of "the immediate abolition
of the state".

While The SPGB has consistently exposed the social harm done by religion
as a means of dividing the working class, of inculcating submissive
docility and obedience to the 'powers that be', some of the Clapham
Party's Companion Parties have decided, astonishingly, that religious
or spiritual belief is a private matter and not a bar to membership.

Among
their members, we even had contact with one who was intent on persuading
us, and his fellow workers, to support the Bush-Blair war against
Iraq!

What
sort of 'unity' should we or could we have with a party so far gone
down the slippery slope of utopianism as this one? A party so confused
and disunited in itself? Clearly, no agreement with that party would
be acceptable to all of its membership, even if we sought such an
agreement.

There
is a gulf that separates us from this confused, idealistic, utopian
outfit. That is a party adrift, tossed hither and thither like so
much flotsam and jetsam on the changing currents of history. It is
a party that has lost its sense of direction since it has abandoned
the principles of Socialism. Any party that does as it has done has,
as it were, dug a deep hole and buried its past record. In so doing,
it has lost its identity, its sense of direction and purpose.

That
is not a party which can honestly declare, in the words of The SPGB's
1905 MANIFESTO, that: "The only true position for a genuine
working-class party is that of open hostility to all who support capitalism
in any shape or form." To unite with such a party would be
a step backward and a betrayal, not just of The SPGB, but of the working
class.

The
Parties of the Second International in 1904

To
the uncritical it looked as if Socialism was " just round
the corner". What they overlooked was the weakness of the
parties that claimed to be Marxian and the futility of those
that did not. All of them were tied to reform programmes that
ultimately put out the fire of revolution they had lighted;
all of them were dominated by the fatal principle of leadership
and all of them collapsed under the blow of the first Great
War.

Our
Contributions To The Socialist Movement

Background
note:

In
September 1904, the first issue of the official journal of the Socialist
Party of Geat Britain, the SOCIALIST STANDARD, was published and in
September 1954, fifty years later, a special commemorative issue was
published. We print below this short article from that issue summarising
some of the Party's contributions to the movement for Socialism since
we maintain that our Party has a unique record, one to be proud of,
both regarding policy and organisation.

1.
We have always insisted upon the capture of political power before
any fundamental change in the social system can be accomplished.
2. Until the majority understood and want this change Socialism cannot
be achieved.
3. Opposition to all reform policies and unswerving pursuit of Socialism
as the sole objective.
4. Opposition to all war without any distinction between alleged wars
of offence, of defence, or against tyranny.
5. The understanding that taxation is a burden upon the capitalist
class and not upon the working class, and therefore any schemes which
are brought forward to cut down taxes are measures of interest to
the capitalist class and not to the working class.
6. That when the workers understand their position and how to change
it they will not require leaders to guide them. Leadership is the
bane of the working class movement for Socialism.
7. That Socialism is international involving the participation of
workers all over the world. Therefore any suggestion of establishing
Socialism in one country alone is anti-socialist.
8. In a given country there can only be one Socialist Party, therefore
no member can belong to any other political party at the same time
as he is a member of the Party.
9. Likewise no member can speak on any other political platform except
in opposition.
10. The Socialist Party must be entirely independent of all other
political parties entering into no agreement or alliances for any
purpose. Compromising this independence for any purpose, however seemingly
innocent, will lead to non-socialists giving support to the Party.
11. We throw our platform open to any opponent to state his case in
opposition to ours.
12. Likewise all our Executive meetings, Branch meetings and Conferences
are open to the public.
13. The members have entire control of the Party and all members are
on an equal footing.
14. Finally the Party has a scrupulous regard for political honesty
and no skeletons are permitted to moulder in cupboards.

Capitalism
Causes Poverty

Recent
figures from the World Health Organisation (June 2000) show that 1.2
billion people, a fifth of the world's population, are living in abject
poverty.

Seventy
per cent of the poor are female, and there are twice as many women
as men among the world's 900 million illiterates. In sub-Saharan Africa,
where a combination of AIDS and poverty is ravaging the population,
life expectancy is dropping back to levels akin to the Black Death,
which afflicted feudal society in the 14th century. A baby born in
Sierra Leone in 1999 can expect to live 25.9 years in good health.

The
United Nations have also provided the following statistics about the
state of capitalism at the beginning of the 21st century:

·
Number of people currently expected to die from starvation: 900 million.

·
Number of children in the world dying each year from controllable
illness: 12 million.

·
Number of people that die each year of preventable social causes:
10 million.

·
Number of children in the world blinded yearly from lack of Vitamin
A: 500 million.

·
Number of children in the world that die by age 5 (yearly): 12 million.

·
UN estimate of yearly expenditure on war: $800 billion.

Poverty
is caused by the means of production being used for the purpose of
profit by a minority class of parasites. Poverty is the exclusion
from direct access to the means of production to secure a decent living.

This
definition of poverty includes most of the planet's inhabitants because
poverty is sustained by and derives from the wages system. Compared
to the class power and privilege of the capitalist class, the working
class, no matter whether they have high or low wages, live in the
developed or developing capitalist countries, live in poverty.

And
defenders of capitalism say that we live in the best of all possible
worlds. But if capitalism is the answer then it was a bloody stupid
question. Surely Socialism must be seen as the answer to these pressing
social problems?

Socialism's
Incentives - Some Questions And Answers

Thanks
for replying to my questions so quickly. I have a few more though
and would be very happy if you tried to answer them for me.
· When socialism is achieved, what incentives are given to
the workers to keep working efficiently if money is not?
· Surely propaganda cannot just be used to do this?
· Is using propaganda deceitful - not giving your average person
the wider picture?
· How does socialism use the education system? How would it
be changed?
· Would it be used for the main purpose of propaganda? What
subjects would be concentrated on?
· Why would socialism be effective here when it hasn't worked
in other countries?
· How would socialism treat people who didn't support it?
· How would socialism provide jobs for all when some people
are lazy? Wouldn't this just put extra strain on the good workers?
· How would money be used in terms of trade with non-socialist
countries?
I have many more questions but this is enough for now I think. Please
answer the questions directly one by one to make it clear. Please
do not just send propaganda.

Thanks
for your time.
Jack Little

Reply
Thank you for your interesting questions, and our apologies for being
so slow in getting back to you about these.
The main problem you raise is an old objection to Socialism, i.e.
what about the lazy people, the greedy people, etc. Let us start with
how a Socialist society would operate, on the principle of "from
each according to their ability, to each according to their needs".
Clearly there will be some people with greater needs and others whose
needs are less. Likewise, not everyone will want to work flat out
all the time. Indeed, in Socialism there would not normally be any
need for excessively long working hours.
Consider how many jobs in capitalism are only necessary because of
trade and taxes. There must be many millions of workers, worldwide,
involved in accountancy, tax advice, tax officials, banking, the pensions
and insurance industries, and so on. In a Socialist society, such
work would no longer be needed. That would release a large part of
the current workforce to do more useful work. In addition, Socialism
- with no need for armed forces - would also find available a large
number of those who currently either work in the armed forces or whose
work - e.g. in the armaments industries - is geared to supplying the
armed forces. In fact, the establishment of worldwide Socialism would
mean a worldwide change in the type of work that society would find
useful or necessary - including turning swords into ploughshares,
to use an old metaphor.

What this would mean is that the size of the available workforce would
be greatly increased by getting rid of all the useless, unnecessary
and often harmful occupations which, in capitalism, are absolutely
essential. With a larger workforce, even if a minority are a bit lazy,
this would hardly pose a problem. After all, in capitalism, we carry
on our backs a parasitic minority class who perform no useful role
at all and consume a disproportionately large portion of what we produce.

However,
such a question is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption about
people's attitudes to work. Even in capitalism, people do a fair amount
of work on a voluntary or unpaid basis, without any monetary incentive.
How many parents, up in the small hours changing babies' nappies or
caring for sick children, are doing this for any financial incentive?
If you ask them, they will say they do it because it has to be done
and it is their responsibility.

When
Socialism is established, it will be established only with the active,
conscious support of an effective majority of the community. It cannot
operate if that support is lacking. What this means is that by the
time Socialism is established, there will be a strong sense of what
is and what is not socially responsible behaviour, what is and what
is not in the interest of the entire community. It follows that instances
of lazy or greedy behaviour - which are all too common in capitalism
- will become relatively rare in Socialism. And this would not pose
much of a problem, in a society where so much unnecessary work had
been got rid of. The real incentive to doing a good job and doing
it well is the knowledge that the work is needed and will be useful
to the community, i.e. to you and yours, and all around you. While
capitalism mostly denies the worker any job-satisfaction, Socialism
would enable workers to take time over their work, producing something
well rather than fast.

The
objection to Socialism which sees the "lazy people" as a
major problem actually does say quite a lot about capitalism: that
in capitalism there is thought to be only one way to get people to
work - by paying them. As Carlyle noted, in capitalism the only social
link is the "cash nexus". That "cash nexus"
finds expression in the price tag on all commodities, from the price
of a loaf of bread which makes it too expensive for the starving poor,
to the rent of a room or flat which results in many workers becoming
homeless.

Re
your questions about the role of propaganda and education, and Socialism's
treatment of those who didn't support Socialism: it seems to us that
these questions are based on an assumption that Socialism would be
forced on people in a top-down way. That is a common enough misunderstanding,
especially since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. As we have always
argued, Socialism can only be achieved by a democratic, class-conscious
majority who understand what Socialism would mean, why it is needed
and how it can be established. There is no way it can be forced on
an unwilling majority.

Also, we would emphasise that Socialism has not yet been established
in any part of the world. The claims, both by the Kremlin and its
Western 'free market' opponents, that the system in Soviet Russia,
China or Cuba was 'Socialist' or 'Marxist' is bogus - an example of
the sort of deceitful propaganda that you and most decent people are
right to be wary of.

Our
case is that a key distinguishing feature of capitalism is the wages
system. So the fact that, throughout the 20th century, this system
was the basis of these economies indicates that, whatever the propaganda,
these countries were just as capitalist as those with private enterprise
capitalism. Moreover, the experience of nationalisation in Britain
and other countries was that, whether employed by private enterprise
businesses or state enterprises, e.g. nationalised industries, makes
no difference to workers' position as exploited wage slaves. The insecurity
and the struggle to make ends meet is much the same for both.

As
to how a Socialist majority, after establishing a society based on
"common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing
and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community",
could or would deal with a minority who still refused to support this
society: a lot would depend on the way such a minority chose to indicate
their dislike of or opposition to Socialism. If they were simply a
minor nuisance - a sort of flat-earther group of eccentrics -, they
would hardly be a problem and could be left to their own devices.
After all, even capitalism tolerates - however unwillingly - the existence
of drop-out communes of a minority who opt out of the capitalist rat
race. Provided these are only a insignificant minority, the system
can get along quite well without them.

Regarding
education, in capitalism this is for the most part simply training
for the job market. Dickens, in his character Gradgrind, gave a good
description of how capitalism sees the function of 'education'. While
Socialism will still need people to acquire skills, including science
and foreign languages, it will also make it possible for people to
continue their education, developing their full potential, exploring
the history and culture of the world, on a free access basis. That
is clearly impossible in capitalism where the question of student
fees - how they and their families can be made to pay for their courses
- acts as a serious disincentive to those thinking of taking a university
course. Education in Socialism would - like other goods - be freely
available to all on the principle of "from each according
to their ability, to each according to their needs". It would
not be, as now, rationed on the basis of ability to pay.

Finally,
you asked about the role of money in trade with non-Socialist countries.
Since Socialism - like capitalism - will be a global social system,
there will be no non-Socialist countries. The term 'trade' implies
the continuance of commodity-production and consequently of 'exchange
value', as in capitalism. However, with the means of production -
land, factories, mines, oil-wells etc - all being owned in common,
by the whole community, so too would be the goods produced. Consequently
there would no longer be any trade in such goods since trade implies
that goods are owned by one person or group and exchanged for the
goods (or money) of some other person or group. A society based on
the whole community owning and producing in common would have no need
for trade or exchange, or for money as a 'universal equivalent', a
medium of exchange and a measure of exchange value.

We
hope we have answered your questions adequately, and that you will
not regard these answers as mere 'propaganda' and therefore
dishonest.

Capitalism
Kills

The
Kalashnikov is the godfather of assault rifles. Total production
is estimated to be between 70 and 100 million, comprising up
to 80 per cent of the total number of assault rifles in the
world ... "I would prefer to have invented a machine that
people could use and that would help farmers with their work
- for example, a lawnmower" - Mikhail Kalashnikov, 2002.

SHATTERED
LIVES, Oxfam and Amnesty International, 2003

One
of the more obscene aspects of capitalism is the way it uses human
ingenuity, science, technology and production to kill in more and
more brutal and indiscriminate ways.

Consider
the BL755 cluster bomb used in Iraq by the British forces. This bomb
is dropped in clusters of 147. At the front end there is a copper
cone. This collapses as the explosive of the munition detonates, producing
a jet of metal which penetrates armour.

The
steel body is made of notched rectangular-sectioned wire, wound into
a bottle shape and brazed to form a sturdy container. When the bomblet
detonates, the notched wire shatters and about two thousand sharp
pieces of steel, each weighing about a tenth of a gram, are projected
sideways and rearwards.

The
result is that these steel fragments slice through human bodies inflicting
pain, agony, mutilation and for the fortunate, a quick death.

All
this violence to protect raw resources, strategic points of interest
and trade routes.

In
a socialist society without nation states, international rivalry and
conflict, social ingenuity and the means of production would be used
to preserve human life rather than end it violently in a brutal, barbaric
and inhumane way.

Object and Declaration of Principles

Object

The
establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership
and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing
and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

Declaration
of Principles

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN HOLDS:

1. That society
as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the
means of living (ie land, factories, railways, etc.) by the
capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of
the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

2. That
in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting
itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not
produce and those who produce but do not possess.

3.That
this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the
working class from the domination of the master class, by the
conversion into common property of society of the means of production
and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.

4. That
as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last
class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working
class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction
of race or sex.

5. That
this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.

6. That
as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of
the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist
class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class
must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of
the powers of government, national and local, in order that this
machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument
of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow
of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.

7. That
as all political parties are but the expression of class interests,
and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed
to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party
seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other
party.

8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field
of political action determined to wage war against all other political
parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls
upon the members of the working class of this country to muster
under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought
to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour,
and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality,
and slavery to freedom.